A Broken Man by Akash Verma – Book Review – Next Is Best

What is reservation or caste system? Is it just a word, system or a product? I still have this confusion.

When I see from a political perspective (although am not the slightest bit political), yet it seems to be a product because everyone is giving arms and legs to buy/sell it for their own benefit.

I am still finding answers for a lot of questions. This is what led me to study A Broken Man by Akash Verma. I wanted to understand this author’s perspective on this subject.

How can we stop differentiating between low caste and high caste?
Is giving reservation a solution?
What are we doing at a personal level to remove the gap between rich and poor or high caste and low caste?

If you have any views please feel free to mention in the comment section.

Story

These questions crossed my mind again while reading A Broken Man by Akash Verma. The book is about two main characters Krishna from Bihar and Chhavi from Lucknow. They met first as a member of two different political parties in the university.

But what next, do they fell in love? Yes, they do and it was quite obvious from the plot. Akash has well explained how two people can come from entirely different backgrounds and yet fall in love.

The high point of this book is that it is a love story wrapped in a rather hippocratic society making the relationship difficult to sustain.

My opinion

Well written book by Akash. The story took a very interesting turn when a Dalit boy fell in love with a brahmin girl.

Good sense of humor when writer mentioned: “It was an uncommon sight in north India, where students are coming from GOD FORSAKEN villages of Uttar Pradesh” . You will find witty comments thrown at the right moments within the tale ensuring your interest does not fade away.

In the beginning of the book, I found the description about KK and Ram Singh was a little too long and monotonous. But once you pass this bit the narrative gets fluid from thereon.

I liked the rawness of Hindi comments mentioned as they are good enough to connect with the Indian readers. However, my favourite was the poetry penned by KK(that is the character of our hero).You can’t stop falling in love with his character and yet feeling helpless at times for him. The student politics keeps the reader gripped and is a consistent theme throughout the love story.

The end is pretty obvious and doesn’t leave any scope for second guesses. Although on second thoughts I don’t even expect a love story to thrill you. It’s a light and easy going book good for reads over a coffee or Indian chai.

I found some grammatical errors but I would like to pin that credit over to the publisher 🙂

I work as a ‘Senior Project Manager’ in a reputed IT company and devise proven marketing strategies to help my global clients expand their digital presence. I counsel young individuals on career choices. I successfully run this blog to help and share my experiences.